


Sudoku

by Heliocat



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ash Lynx Can Be Annoying, Ash Lynx Is A Genius, Cute Okumura Eiji, Gen, Puzzles, Sudoku, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28720653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heliocat/pseuds/Heliocat
Summary: Eiji has a book of Japanese number puzzles which intrigue Ash. To Eiji's annoyance, he's very good at them too.
Relationships: Ash Lynx & Okumura Eiji
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	Sudoku

**Author's Note:**

> When it comes to Sudoku, I am both Eiji and Ash: I want to solve the puzzles myself, but if someone else is solving one I want to help. 
> 
> Anything written <"like this"> indicates Japanese being spoken.
> 
> British English spelling and grammar, so accept my superfluous 'u's as I scatter them liberally everywhere like confetti. 
> 
> Many thanks to Akimi Yoshida for creating Banana Fish - this is a work of fanfiction, so I own none of the intellectual property.

“I’m back!”

<”Welcome back!”>

Eiji was sat at the kitchen table when he came home, sucking the end of a pen thoughtfully. In front of him was a book full of puzzles that he was diligently filling in, eyebrows knotted in a cute pensive frown. He removed the pen from between his lips to scribble something in the book with a pleased little smile.

“Max came by an hour ago,” he said, not looking up from the book and waving a hand towards the kitchen counter. “He bring file you said you needed, and ask that you meet him at Grand Central on Tuesday at 2pm. He hoped you may have been here today, but I told him you go out.”

“Argh, I told him not to come here!” Ash growled, but he picked up the file and flicked through it with interest anyway.

“He said you complain about that,” Eiji smirked. “He also say, ‘Tell him, it look suspicious if the father not come home now and again to check on son, when this technically his apartment in his name’.”

“Wise-ass…” Ash muttered. He sat next to Eiji at the table with the file, donning his glasses and reading the first couple of pages with a grim expression. Eiji, meanwhile, scrawled another couple of things down in the puzzle book. Interested, Ash glanced over, seeing the book was full of square grids with scattered numbers in them. They were similar to those ‘magic square’ puzzles they published in the paper, only the grids looked like they were split into 9 sets of 3x3 blocks in a 9x9 square. “What are you doing?” he asked, curious.

“Sudoku,” Eiji replied. “Ibe-san thought I might be bored, so he bring me puzzles to do.”

“Soo-dow-coo?”

“Su-Do-Ku,” Eiji sounded out the syllables. “Very popular number puzzle in Japan. You fill in lines and squares with number 1 to 9, and cannot have same number twice in a line or box. Can be very tricky.”

“Oh. So, it’s like a logic puzzle?”

“Mnn.” Eiji nodded as he filled in another number. Ash eyed it up, scanning the puzzle with a critical eye.

“That should be a three,” he said blandly.

“What?”

“That nine you filled in? It’s wrong. It’s a three.”

Eiji took a closer look at the puzzle, cross-checking the line and box, and was mildly irked to see that Ash was right; it was supposed to be a three. He growled under his breath as he scribbled out the nine and squeezed the number three into the remaining space.

“Six there,” Ash said, pointing to an empty box.

“Eh?” Eiji checked it, finding him to be correct again. He filled it in.

“And that’s a two, a five, and another three,” Ash pointed out three more empty boxes.

“Ash – I want to do by self!” Eiji moaned.

“I can also see another point where you went wrong,” Ash smirked. “That seven there? Should be three.”

“I would find out by self eventually,” Eiji muttered.

Ash left him alone to fill in a couple more numbers by himself, watching him with a sly smile, before swooping in, pointing at another blank box, and merely saying, “Eight.”

“ASH!” Eiji chided him, exasperated, trying to hide the sudoku from him. “This my puzzle! Let me do it!”

“I’m only trying to help,” Ash said, holding up his hands.

“I not want help! I need help, I ask, okay? You read your file!”

“Okay! Okay! Sheesh, don’t get your panties in a bunch!”

Eiji returned to the puzzle, his frown deeper than before, slightly annoyed. He managed to fill in a further two numbers and was filling in the third.

“Ooooh, no, I wouldn’t put that there,” Ash said smarmily.

“What?”

“You said you didn’t want help,” Ash told him. “I’m staying quiet.”

<”Funny way of staying quiet…”> Eiji mumbled, but he double checked the number and adjusted it accordingly.

“Nope,” Ash said, when he adjusted it wrong.

“Raargh!” he growled, scribbling it out.

“I’ll give you a hint: it’s between three and five and rhymes with ‘door’.”

Eiji smooshed a deformed ‘four’ into the corner of the box, but he glared at Ash as he did it.

Ash let him fill in one more number before pointing out, “Five, six, nine, seven, and finished.”

<”That does it,”> Eiji snapped, pushed over the brink. “If you so smart, solve this one!” He opened the book to the very last page, presenting Ash with a complicated looking puzzle comprising five of the normal sudoku squares linked together. To make things even harder, rather than the 9x9 layout, these were 16x16. “I go watch TV, let nerd solve problem by self!” He stalked off, slumping onto the couch with an irritated sigh, picking up the remote and turning on some trash to watch, muttering to himself under his breath in Japanese.

“Aww, c’mon Eiji, don’t be like that,” Ash said.

“Your puzzle book now,” Eiji replied waspishly.

“Fair enough,” Ash sighed. Knowing what Eiji was like, he would calm down from his tantrum quickly and would want the puzzle book back, although he’d likely only fill it in when Ash was out in future. Ash picked it up and studied the difficult grid, eyes flicking over the boxes judgementally. He could already see the placement of seven numbers.

He picked up the pen and started to fill it in.

*

Eiji calmed after about fifteen minutes. Ash had been eerily quiet in that time, and he was a little concerned he may have inadvertently upset him. He had only been trying to help; it wasn’t his fault he was smart and Eiji was dumb.

“Ash?” he called out to him, turning round on the couch. He found him staring at the puzzle book, tongue just poking out from between his lips as he concentrated, twiddling the pen between thumb and finger. He scrawled in a number, eyes flitting back and forth, counting in his head. He didn’t respond to Eiji, completely engrossed in his task. Eiji stood up and moved quietly back to the table. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw he had already filled in 2/3 of the puzzle. <”Amazing!”> Eiji gasped.

“Huh?” Ash snapped out of his intellectual daze to find Eiji hovering behind him.

“You fill that in so fast!” Eiji said in awe. “It take me ages just to do normal square sometimes!”

“They’re pretty easy once you get the hang of them,” Ash said. “It’s just annoying when there are too many possibilities for one of the boxes and you can’t narrow it down. Sometimes, you have to guess and see if the other numbers around it fit or not.”

“This your first time do sudoku?” Eiji asked, amazed that he had picked them up so fast.

“Yeah,” Ash nodded, “but I’ve done similar stuff before.” He filled in another two numbers back-to-back, made a satisfied noise, and then completed one of the 16x16 squares with the information he had.

“You some kind of genius, I think,” Eiji said, a hint of pride in his voice.

“You could say that,” Ash snorted, scrawling another couple of numbers in and completing a line. He’d never actually told Eiji his IQ. It wasn’t something he was especially proud of, but his intellect was probably the only thing that had saved him. Being a sharpshooter alone wasn’t enough on the street, and while he could fight he wouldn’t have been especially strong without the correct physical and mental training. He knew full well that Blanca would never have been involved in his life had he been an average dumb kid. He would have died a whore, a hollow husk useful only as a fuck-toy until he broke entirely and gave up on life, probably pumped full of opium as he lay on a bed in a squalid brothel patronised by the rich and famous by the riverside. Now, he relied on his brain to outsmart people and stay one step ahead of his enemies.

“You so fast at solving!” Eiji praised him again, watching him curiously as he finished off the last few numbers.

“Once you break its spine, the rest falls into place,” Ash shrugged, closing the book and rolling his shoulders to relieve some tension in his upper back.

“I sorry I got angry,” Eiji told him. “I just annoyed because I not very smart. Feel like… stupid idiot, because you solve puzzle faster.”

“You’re not stupid, Eiji,” Ash assured him. “You’re smarter than you think. You were doing well by yourself – you’d have solved it eventually! I’d be annoyed too if someone kept butting in while I was trying to solve a challenge by myself – I was just being an asshole on purpose. I’m sorry.”

“You no need be asshole on purpose,” Eiji said smirking. “You manage it just fine without trying! Comes naturally.”

“Hey! That’s mean,” Ash said, frowning at him. “Just for that, I’m not giving these puzzles back.”

“What? Ash!”

“Oh no, you said these were mine now! They’re kinda fun; I’m keeping them!”

“Aaaaaaash!”

“I’ll ask Ibe to get you another book,” Ash grinned cheekily. “These are mine!”


End file.
